Former South African judge appointed as United Nations human rights watchdog last year. Recently appealed to U.S. President Barack Obama to release Guantanamo Bay inmates or try them in a court of law. Co-founded Equality Now, an international women's rights organization. "There are benchmarks of progress—women in parliament, female heads of state, women on the highest courts and in the U.N. Perhaps as a result, I see girls worldwide growing up with a new sense of themselves that I and most women of my generation were not given. These girls are powerful," she stated in March. Pillay rose from modest beginnings—her father was a bus driver, and her mother had no formal education—to become a defense lawyer for apartheid-era political prisoners. —Tatiana Serafin

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